Well it's another winter storm here in Philadelphia, and I find myself "working from home." In other words: SNOW DAY! Both my wife and I decided it would be safer (a.k.a. more convenient) to not drive in this frightful weather, so I have some time to write the book review I've been meaning to get to for a little over a week.
The book is called Rot and Ruin, and it's another novel from one of my favorite authors, Jonathan Maberry. Originally a short story called "The Family Business," Rot and Ruin tells the tale of brothers Benny and Tom Imura. They live in Mountainside, one of the few walled towns that serve as a safe haven from zombies, who have taken over much of the world after they first started to appear 14 years before the beginning of the story.
While zombies obviously play a large role in the plot, I think the story concentrates more on the ways in which people cope with the catastrophe as opposed to the catastrophe itself. This is nothing new, as we see this approach in a lot of zombie stories, even as recently as the TV show The Walking Dead. Since it's not fresh territory, a story like this lives or dies based on whether or not you actually care for the characters enough to give a crap about how they are coping.
As usual, Maberry succeeds to this end. I enjoyed reading the developing relationship between Benny, the story's narrator, and his brother Tom. I do need to note that Benny is only fifteen years old, which is important because you're constantly reminded through his opinions and actions that he is a teenager, and that teenagers are sometimes really stupid. Even though the story is told through his eyes, you figure out pretty quickly that he has a somewhat skewed image of his brother Tom, a well-known zombie hunter for the town.
According to Benny, Tom is weak and even something of a coward. His first "memory" is of Tom running away with Benny and leaving their mother to the zombies. And even as a zombie hunter, Benny doesn't see in Tom the cocky swagger of other zombie hunters like "Pink-Eye" Charlie Matthias, Benny's idol in the beginning of the book. Pink-Eye is a large albino who regales the town with stories of his conquests out in the unprotected area outside the city. But let's face it. As a large, ugly albino, there was little chance that he was ever going to be the good guy of the story. As a matter of face, like in any good zombie story, he turns out to be more of a villain than the zombies themselves.
But this is the type of message that you have to write on a shovel and hit Benny in the head with to make it sink in. As the reader, we can figure out rather quickly that Tom's philosophical approach to his work hides a natural ability to kick ass. The indications of said ass-kicking ability aren't really subtle at all, but I think that stems from the fact that this book is geared towards teenagers. I actually found it in the "Teen" section of the library. Before anyone starts giving me shit, I should remind you that there were plenty of adults waiting in line for the midnight release of the last Harry Potter book. My point is that in a story narrated by and, presumably, read by a teenager, sometimes subtlety is passed up for melodrama.
Realism, unfortunately, has to take a backseat at times as well. Much of the language, for example, has been sanitized for the sake of the book's younger audience. And I don't mean to say that a book is bad if you don't curse as much as possible. But at the same time, if you're a 15-year-old being chased by zombies, I can't help but think that you might say the word "fuck" a couple of times.
But don't worry, while the language might be a tad watered-down, the fun zombie gore is still intact. With Tom's weapon-of-choice being a katana, you get all kinds of hacked limbs and blood splatter. Not to mention that it's hard to even describe a zombie without some macabre imagery. And what's important is that all of this gory gravy covers the meat and potatoes of a story about characters that I did in fact care about, even if they weren't terribly nuanced.
Grade: B
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